Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone
(c. 1267 - 1337).
Florentine painter and architect.
Outstanding as a painter, sculptor, and architect,
Giotto was recognized as the first genius of art in the Italian Renaissance.
Giotto lived and worked at a time when people's minds and talents were first
being freed from the shackles of medieval restraint. He dealt largely in the
traditional religious subjects, but he gave these subjects an earthly,
full-blooded life and force.

The artist's full name was Giotto di Bondone. He was born about 1266 in
the village of Vespignano, near Florence. His father was a small landed
farmer. Giorgio Vasari, one of Giotto's first biographers, tells how Cimabue,
a well-known Florentine painter, discovered Giotto's talents. Cimabue
supposedly saw the 12-year-old boy sketching one of his father's sheep on a
flat rock and was so impressed with his talent that he persuaded the father
to let Giotto become his pupil. Another story is that Giotto, while
apprenticed to a wool merchant in Florence, frequented Cimabue's studio so
much that he was finally allowed to study painting.

The earliest of Giotto's known works is a series of frescoes (paintings on
fresh, still wet plaster) on the life of St. Francis in the church at Assisi.
Each fresco depicts an incident; the human and animal figures are realistic
and the scenes expressive of the gentle spirit of this patron saint of
animals. In about 1305 and 1306 Giotto painted a notable series of 38
frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua. The frescoes illustrate the lives of
Jesus Christ and of the Virgin Mary. Over the archway of the choir is a scene
of the Court of Heaven, and a Last Judgment scene faces it on the entrance
wall. The compositions are simple, the backgrounds are subordinated, and the
faces are studies in emotional expression.

Vasari tells the story of how Pope Boniface VIII sent a messenger to
Giotto with a request for samples of his work. Giotto dipped his brush in red
and with one continuous stroke painted a perfect circle. He then assured the
messenger that the worth of this sample would be recognized. When the pope
saw it, he "instantly perceived that Giotto surpassed all other painters of
his time."

In Rome, Naples, and Florence, Giotto executed commissions from princes
and high churchmen. In the Bargello, or Palace of the Podesta (now a museum),
in Florence is a series of his Biblical scenes. Among the bystanders in the
paintings is a portrait of his friend the poet Dante. The Church of Santa
Croce is adorned by Giotto murals depicting the life of St. Francis.

In 1334 the city of Florence honored Giotto with the title of Magnus
Magister (Great Master) and appointed him city architect and superintendent
of public works. In this capacity he designed the famous campanile (bell
tower). He died in 1337, before the work was finished.

Giotto was short and homely, and he was a great wit and practical joker.
He was married and left six children at his death. Unlike many of his fellow
artists, he saved his money and was accounted a rich man. He was on familiar
terms with the pope, and King Robert of Naples called him a good friend.

In common with other artists of his day, Giotto lacked the technical
knowledge of anatomy and perspective that later painters learned. Yet what he
possessed was infinitely greater than the technical skill of the artists who
followed him. He had a grasp of human emotion and of what was significant in
human life. In concentrating on these essentials he created compelling
pictures of people under stress, of people caught up in crises and
soul-searching decisions. Modern artists often seek inspiration from Giotto.
In him they find a direct approach to human experience that remains valid for
every age.

Giotto is regarded as the founder of the central tradition of Western
painting because his work broke free from the stylizations of
Byzantine art, introducing new ideals of naturalism and creating a
convincing sense of pictorial space. His momentous achievement was
recognized by his contemporaries (Dante praised him in a famous passage
of The Divine Comedy, where he said he had surpassed his
master Cimabue), and in about 1400
Cennino Cennini wrote `Giotto translated the art of painting from
Greek to Latin.'

In spite of his fame and the demand for his services, no surviving
painting is documented as being by him. His work, indeed, poses
some formidable problems of attribution, but it is universally agreed
that the fresco cycle in the Arena Chapel at Padua is by Giotto, and it
forms the starting-point for any consideration of his work.
The Arena Chapel (so-called because it occupies the site of a Roman
arena) was built by Enrico Scrovegni in expiation for the sins of his
father, a notorious usurer mentioned by Dante. It was begun in 1303
and Giotto's frescos are usually dated c. 1305-06.
They run right round the interior of the building; the west wall is
covered with a Last Judgement, there is an
Annunciation over the chancel arch, and the main wall areas
have three tiers of paintings representing scenes from the life of
the Virgin and her parents, St Anne and St Joachim, and events from the
Passion of Christ. Below these scenes are figures personifying Virtues
and Vices, painted to simulate stone reliefs -- the first grisailles.
The figures in the main narrative scenes are about half-size, but in
reproduction they usually look bigger because Giotto's conception is so
grand and powerful. His figures have a completely new sense of
three-dimensionality and physical presence, and in portraying the sacred
events he creates a feeling of moral weight rather than divine splendor.
He seems to base the representations upon personal experience, and no
artist has surpassed his ability to go straight to the heart of a story
and express its essence with gestures and expressions of unerring
conviction.

The other major fresco cycle associated with Giotto's name is that on the
Life of St Francis in the Upper Church of S. Francesco at Assisi.
Whether Giotto painted this is not only the central problem facing
scholars of his work, but also one of the most controversial issues in
the history of art.
The St Francis frescos are clearly the work of an artist of great stature
(their intimate and humane portrayals have done much to determine
posterity's mental image of the saint), but the stylistic differences
between these works and the Arena Chapel frescos seem to many critics
so pronounced that they cannot accept a common authorship.
Attempts to attribute other frescos at Assisi to Giotto have met with
no less controversy.

There is a fair measure of agreement about the frescos associated with
Giotto in Sta Croce in Florence. He probably painted in four chapels
there, and work survives in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels, probably dating
from the 1320s. The frescos are in very uneven condition (they were
whitewashed in the 18th century), but some of those in the Bardi Chapel
on the life of St Francis remain deeply impressive.

Nothing survives of Giotto's work done for Robert of Anjou in Naples,
and the huge mosaic of the Ship of the Church (the Navicella)
that he designed for Old St Peter's in Rome has been so thoroughly
altered that it tells us nothing about his style. In Rome he would have
seen the work of
Pietro Cavallini,
which was as important an influence on him as that of his master Cimabue.

Several panel paintings bear Giotto's signature, notably the
Stefaneschi
Altarpiece
(Vatican), done for Cardinal Stefaneschi, who
also commissioned the Navicella, but it is generally agreed
that the signature is a trademark showing that the works came from
Giotto's shop rather than an indication of his personal workmanship.
On the other hand, the
Ognissanti Madonna (Uffizi, Florence, c. 1305-10)
is neither signed nor firmly documented, but is a work of such grandeur
and humanity that it is universally accepted as Giotto's.

Among the other panels attributed to him, the finest is the Crucifix in
Sta Maria Novella, Florence. On account of his great fame as a painter,
Giotto was appointed architect to Florence Cathedral in 1334; he began
the celebrated campanile, but his design was altered after his death.

In the generation after his death he had an overwhelming influence on
Florentine painting; it declined with the growth of
International Gothic,
but his work was later an inspiration to
Masaccio, and even to
Michelangelo.
These two giants were his true spiritual heirs.